Wednesday, 4 March 2015

The general principles of freedom (Part I)

Recently I've been roving the hood on more occasions as a form of exercise. I cannot help but notice a striking persian house cat, adorned with a spotted coat of brown and a nice leather collar, skulking around. For good times sake in rememberance of a Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro classic, let's call this persian kitty "Mr Jinx".

At times I've witnessed Mr Jinx hunting, moving around with a stealthy and silky smooth demeanour similar to its bigger relatives seen on National Geographic. Other times I've seen Mr Jinx occupy the centre of the road, oblivious of the surroundings, acting like a boss and generally not giving a flying fuck. Nothing seems to faze Mr Jinx here. And I've even had the chance to see it *gasp* mate - that my friends was quite a comical sight.

It dawned on me that at the end of the day I felt just like Mr Jinx. Generally, on some days I feel like chilling out and doing nothing much in particular, on others I feel like getting down to business and getting shit done and on others I feel like [insert appropriate adjectives here]. To summarise - I feel like doing what I want to do at that time, similar to what Mr Jinx does.

Alas most humans have this thing called a J.O.B that is structured to prevent you from living the life you want to live. Yeah you might surmise that you get some pleasure and endorphin rush to your brain from doing your job - hey I actually know people in reality who say that they adore working 90 hour weeks even as a Managing Director (gotta get a CT scan bro), but generally I feel very much constrained by the proverbial 0900 to 0000 (15 hr days are pretty common in my industry, some might even say that is a luxury), so what's one to do in this particular dilemma?

The easy thing would be flipping the bird to the mainstream, peacing out and living life as a hermit or a recluse, but I think the more effective way would be to embark on what one can describe as your personal role playing game in what would be mostly aptly termed 'The Capitalist', for the gaming afficionados, probably something similar would be Dragon Age, Final Fantasy or one might even say Football Manager, except you can't hit the 'save game' and restart your game. Mis-steps could potentially set you back by a couple years of freedom.

The question lies in your strategy, and execution thereof, in this dynamic game. How exciting the world seems once you adopt this attitude.

But what should this strategy comprise of? Let's discuss this over the course of the next couple of weeks...